The busted myth that left Wasps leaning on psychologist this week

Wasps boss Lee Blackett has revealed that the wounding nature of their opening round Gallagher Premiership loss at Gloucester last Sunday resulted in the club psychologist implementing a process to ensure it doesn’t happen again this season. The Coventry-based club were 21-0 ahead at Kingsholm and pressing the line for the bonus point fourth try when they fell victim to a Louis Rees-Zammit breakaway score that tilted momentum and ignited Gloucester’s 27-21 comeback win.

It was a devastating setback for Wasps as they had dominated the opening half and appeared to have the win in the bag until they came unstuck after the interval. Blackett had grounds to be furious in the sense that a big lead was surrendered but he instead insisted he couldn’t fault his players as the markers he uses weekly to judge a performance were all met by his team.

That meant it was left to the Wasps psychologist to sift through the debris and come up with a process that should help the players when they next find themselves in a Premiership position similar to what unfolded at Gloucester.

“Every single week there are four things we look at, main efforts around the game, and whenever we hit all four – kick chase speed, breakdown speeds, tackle reload and attack reload – we always win and unfortunately that is now a myth because all our main effort things we look at we hit the target and were well past.

“The effort was there, there were just certain things second half. That is why I can’t always be harsh on my players when the effort is there. It was just little things we need to make sure we are better.”

Describing momentum as the hardest thing to coach in rugby, Blackett added: “It is just one of those things. It is a feeling, it’s not an action. It’s a feeling and that is why it is so difficult. When we spoke this week our psychologist did some work on it with us Tuesday, we came back to it Wednesday and it is just about trying to put a process in the next time it happens.

“I’m not known to be aggressive but the one thing I don’t like is when we don’t turn up and we don’t give it everything. At the weekend we gave it absolutely everything so for us it was sometimes the boys wanting to solve it quickly but their passion for the club and their desire to win eventually worked as a negative. We have got a process that will stay between us in place now to try and deal with those situations.”